Management is an extremely competitive profession; where one is pitted against the best of the best. He has to beat the performance benchmarks amongst his peer group, in order to forge his way ahead and have a successful career.

David Boyle realized that there is a bigger audience and decided to dub his film in Hindi and Tamil. The film Slumdog Millionaire got unprecedented media coverage (helped also by the Oscar nominations); and opened to packed houses across multiplexes in the country.

Lets now see how 2009 fares for the FMCG industry and the retail trade in India. For now the small store format still rules. For the 2% Modern retailers; they have to first look inwards and sort out the mess they are in; before they can look to serve the shoppers better.

Indore, like most Indian cities, till 3 years back had a public transport system run by contract mini buses run by operators who got their permit either due to their connections in the government or their ability to bribe the bureaucrats and politicians.

Cadbury launched Bourneville fine dark chocolate in India last quarter. Well coordinated marketing at relevant consumer touch points â€“ front page ad in Economic Times with catchy taglines ('Food of the Gods and other Top Management); upscale ad campaign targeted at the well healed.

With a wide ranging analysis and views about the possible reversal in share prices of equities in global markets in 2009, many research companies are coming out with their own take on the stocks that could outperform the market.

One approach adopted by some of the leading FMCG majors manages to cut across the clutter. It is to divide the Indian Consumer into three broad stereotypes based on a) their size of wallet, occupation and education and b) the sort of town/village or city they live in.

In India; where 7 million small stores serve a billion consumers with 25% of them earning less than a dollar a day; the winning brands have their sachet avatar which is essentially a 2 cent pack affordable to most consumers hence available at most retail outlets.

Zero Moment of Truth in Marketing - An average consumer comes across 6 million brand messages every year across various media - TV/print, events, SMS, outdoors, telemarketing, Point of sale, direct to consumer demos, endorsements.